


This Ain't Exactly Travelin' Light

by JanellyficWIPgraveyard (LadyJanelly)



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, Girl Scouts is a paramilitary organization, Zombie Apocalypse, abandoned work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:41:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/JanellyficWIPgraveyard
Summary: “We’ve got civilians on the ground. A man and five kids,” Cougar tells Clay and Clay swears back but not in anger. It’s been a month since their orders: to find pockets of survivors and bring them back to Bragg. Even if there’s been no response to their radio check-ins for weeks and they aren’t even sure there’s a base to bring them back to, it’s damn good to know they aren’t the last uninfected people on earth.The world ends, but orders are orders and Clay and his men are doing their best, zombies notwithstanding.Girl Scout Troupe big-brother Jake and his small survivors make their lives a little more difficult.





	This Ain't Exactly Travelin' Light

**Author's Note:**

> Alas, this fic is abandoned. I had issues with the longer-term futures I could see for the girls and squicked myself out of the fic. Nothing bad happens to these kids in this fic, but it's mentioned that the troupe has lost members to zombies, and mentioned that another group had bad intentions towards the girls.

Cougar climbs the rickety fire escape on the back-side of the old-fashioned theater, rust flaking under his hands, every creak and groan of the metal sending an echoing shiver of apprehension up his spine. Buzzards circle above the silent streets; a crow caws from above him. They shouldn’t be here, the battered remnants of his team, but they lost nearly half their food when Wilkins went down, and they need other things besides—batteries for the throat-mics and night-vision goggles, bottled water if they can find it, first aid supplies, just in case. 

Clay sends him in first. Quieter than the rest, more mobile. Quicker than Pooch, lighter than Roque, younger than Clay. Of them all, he’s the one most used to being on his own, to evading without being seen. It makes sense for him to be on recon. There’s nobody else.

He gets to the roof and waits, listening for the enemy, for their dragging steps and low moans. 

All is quiet and he walks to the front of the building, tense at every crunch of gravel under his boots. 

He rests the rifle on the low wall around the roof’s edge and scans the streets below through the scope. It’s unearthly, the way movement catches the eye when so much is still. The tattered M flag on the McDonald’s, trees swaying in the wind, the swings at the park swishing lazily back and forth. But no people. No early-morning shoppers going into the small stores, nobody moving in the clutter of cars that clogs the street. 

But best of all, no enemies.

“In position,” Cougar mutters. “All clear.”

“Affirmative,” Clay answers and Cougar knows they’ll be coming in from the north, slow and quiet, heading for the drug-store, hoping to pick up most of what they need with a minimum of noise. Noise is bad these days. Disastrous. 

Cougar makes another sweep of the street. He can help cover them from here, but he’s down to five shots in the rifle and if they get mobbed he’ll be next to useless.

Movement catches his eye, moving counter to the wind. “Boss,” he whispers and knows that his team has hidden where they are, frozen and waiting for him to say what he sees.

What he sees is a man, tall and built. Blond hair and glasses, a pack on his back and a hunting rifle in his hands. He moves cautiously, but with military precision. As Cougar watches, he stops and looks around, like he can feel Cougar’s eyes on him. The man waits and when nothing happens he makes a ‘move up’ gesture to someone behind him, not looking back to see if he’s obeyed. 

Cougar blinks as quick figures come out of the frozen traffic jam. Green uniforms but as far from US Army as could be imagined. Five children. Little girls. Jogging fast and quiet in the man’s wake, miniature backpacks and bed-rolls on their shoulders. 

“We’ve got civilians on the ground. A man and five kids,” he tells Clay and Clay swears back but not in anger. It’s been a month since their orders: to find pockets of survivors and bring them back to Bragg. Even if there’s been no response to their radio check-ins for weeks and they aren’t even sure there’s a base to bring them back to, it’s damn good to know they aren’t the last uninfected people on earth.

More movement from below and Cougar turns to see if it’s more of this strange little unit. His stomach twists as the shambling figure steps into the cross-hairs of his sight. Months into the epidemic, the sight of them still makes him want to hurl. He thinks it was probably once a soccer-mom, in her yoga pants and low-cut top. Now she’s missing half of an arm and her face is filled with maggots and she’s heading towards the tail end of the line of girl-scouts.

Cougar whistles, short and sharp, and the guy with the rifle turns towards the sound, catches the sun’s glint off of Cougar’s sight and raises his own barrel Cougar’s way. He’s not likely a danger, not at that range with that gun, but it’s hard for Cougar to not pull the trigger on him. He clenches his jaw and points at the Z and the guy turns and hisses instructions to his girls, sending them running in an orderly line to some pre-determined location. 

The Z is standing, weaving a little as it listens around for the source of the whistle, and the man pulls a baseball-bat from where it was strapped into his pack and advances on it. He’s still out of range when the Z hears him and turns, reaches for him with its one hand. He smacks the clawed fingers away, hard enough to leave the bones shattered and the limb dangling. It takes another step towards him, mouth gaping and arm flopping and he catches it a good shot upside the head and it goes down, brains spattering on the sidewalk.

He turns back to Cougar’s perch on the roof then, every line of his body tense, and then he turns and goes after the girls, dodging behind the first bit of cover he can find like he expects a bullet in the back at any second.

“Shit,” Cougar says, soft and low. “Z spooked them. Heading west through town.”

“You got any other activity?” Clay asks.

“Negative. Go slow and watch yourselves. He’s armed and there may be more Zs.”

He stays in position for another hour, looking for the man and kids through his scope as Pooch, Roque and Clay comb the town for them, gathering what supplies they find. Roque stumbles across a Z in the hardware store, but the rats and flies have been at it and it’s barely mobile by the time he bashes its head in.

Cougar covers his team’s back until they’re regrouped and then he hurries down the fire escape and across the silent thoroughfare to join them at the edge of town.

Clay is pacing, agitated, when Cougar gets there. “Tell us what you saw,” he says and Cougar understands his urgency. Civilians. Kids. It’s more hope than they’ve had in months, since the wave of contagion swept away the outside world, everybody they’d ever known, everything but the team. 

He pulls up every detail of what he’d seen. “Adult male, in his twenties or thirties, I’d guess. Fit, built. Carried himself like he’s military. (rifle desc here). Carried it like he knew how to use it. He’s moving with five girls that I saw. They’re in uniform. The ah, thing with the cookies.”

Pooch chokes a laugh. “Little girls? Girl Scouts? Fuck. Fuck. Jolene, she always said they were a paramilitary organization.” His eyes start to water and he has to turn away. Of all of them, Cougar thinks Pooch’s pain is the sharpest, the closest. His wife had been pregnant, Atlanta one of the first cities the President had declared lost and authorized air strikes against.

“Aw, hell,” Roque mutters. “How the hell have a man and five kids survived this long when half a special-forces team didn’t?”

Clay scrubs a hand over the scruff of his beard. “Let’s find him and ask.”

=============  
“Here we go,” Jensen urges, quiet and calm even though his heart is pounding. “Watch for poison ivy, keep to the deep brush.” It’ll make it harder going for him, but hopefully slow any pursuit down to the girls’ pace. They can’t outrun grown men on smooth terrain, but the thick undergrowth isn’t slowing their small bodies as much as it will the militia guys or whatever the hell they are. The hills and valleys outside of the little town are old-growth wild woods in this part of North Carolina. He thinks they’re back in the state park, if he remembers his map right and hasn’t gotten turned around more than he thought.

The girls scamper through the woods like rabbits and Jensen crashes through after them, more worried about speed than anything. If the team behind them has a dog or a decent tracker they’re screwed anyway. The Z seem to have no sense of smell and little eyesight, blundering around by feel and sound. He’s never thought to teach the girls not to leave a trail and it’s a little late now.

Tia stumbles and he picks her back to her feet while barely breaking stride. They’re tired, hungry or he wouldn’t have risked going into a town. Even going through the brush, there’s little hope of losing their pursuit if the guys follow, and Jensen has little hope that they won’t. The last bunch he’d run into had been very clear about their intentions and the innate value of his charges. 

They scramble down a hill and a little stream runs through the bottom. “Okay girls, shoes off,” he says, stopping to rip at his own boot-laces. “Tie them together and hang them over your shoulders. We’re gonna walk down the water for a while; try to not stir up the sand too much.”

They head up-stream for a quarter-mile or so. Stop to drink some water and refill their canteens before putting their shoes back on and moving on again. He knows they can’t keep up the pace much longer. He starts looking for a place to make a stand, where he can buy the girls a little time, even knowing that without him they’ve got little chance of living very long. 

He thinks maybe they should have stayed in the town, hoped to bring some Zs down on the militia guys. Too late now, there’s little to no chance of a shambler hearing even a gun-shot and getting here in time to be any use at all.

They break through the trees at the top of the ridge line and out into an open swath of land, probably cleared for a millionaire’s house. Jensen realizes he must be turned around again but it hardly matters now. He looks out over the sprawling valley and the only landmark he sees is the sharp straight cut of the powerlines. 

“Okay,” he says, and he hates this. “I’m going to make sure those guys aren’t following us. I need you to meet me at the sixth pole from the bottom. Remember to hide, never sleep on the ground, start no fires, keep a watch.” He touches each of the girls, a hand to Ashley’s shoulder, Madison’s hair, Ashleigh’s cheek. “If I’m not there by tomorrow morning, keep moving but don’t come back this way. I’ll find you.”

They nod and he holds out his little finger. “Pinky-swear?” They all do and he opens his pack, distributes the last of the food to Tia and Hailey, the oldest ones. “Okay, go,” he says, “I’ll see you soon.”

He watches for long enough to be sure that they’ll go and keep moving and then he finds a big rock to hide behind and sets up with the rifle. 

“Yeah,” he says to himself, “So this is gonna suck.”

 

============

Clay pushes through the dense brush, sumac bushes aromatic and inter-woven blocking his way. Fucking hell, he thinks in annoyance, even though he knows he’d have done the same thing. He follows the blatant tracks down one valley and to the stream at the bottom. The footprints and broken branches end then and the sand at the bottom of the stream has all settled again. 

“Shit,” he says over the comm. “I’ve lost them here at a stream. Roque, you I’ll take the North, Cougar and Pooch the South.” 

They move along the water, a man on each side but it isn’t too long before Roque says “I’ve got tracks. Little boots.” Clay and Roque head off after them, leaving Cougar and Pooch to catch up. They cut through the woods, only pulling up when the forest opens out into an artificial clearing at the top of a ridge.

“Hey!” a voice rings out, the first human sound that wasn’t one of their team that they’ve heard since the contact with Bragg went dead. The click-clack of a rifle being cocked echoes loud around them. Clay sees movement behind a large clump of rock. He holds his hands out at his side, and Roque looks at him like he’s lost his damn mind.

“We’re not here to hurt anybody,” Clay assures the man, “Just want to talk to you.” 

“Not feeling real social today,” comes the reply, “Why don’t you have your people call my people, we’ll do coffee tomorrow.”

“Moving around to flank him,” Cougar says on the comm, “Keep him talking,” and Clay nods slightly, not knowing if Cougar can see him or not. 

“Look,” says Clay, “You hungry? The kids hungry? We picked up some food in town. I figure half of it at least would have been yours if you hadn’t had to clear out the Z. Just let me give you your share.”

“I keep them fed just fine without your help,” the guy yells. “You can fuck off back the way you came any time now. You come any closer and I swear to god I’ll shoot you in the face.”

“Hey, now.” Clay puts on an affronted tone. “We’re all human here. There’s no call for violence.”

The guy says slow and clear, “You turn around and walk away and nobody gets hurt. That’s my best offer.”

“How about I just leave the food here and you come get it at your leisure?” Clay asks, and he’s just stalling now. When no shots are fired he slowly pulls his pack off of his back, pretends to dig around for food. In the back of his mind he knows he’s pushing it, that the man on the hill won’t wait forever, and bullets too scarce for warning shots. 

===============

Cougar slips through the trees, rifle in hand, pack left with Pooch. Quiet as a ghost, moving around the man-made clearing. He can hear Clay on the comm, distracting, stalling. He comes out of the forest on the opposite side of their target from Clay. He’s a little down-hill and only about twenty feet from the man’s broad back naked for the shot Cougar could make in his sleep but doesn’t take. He brings the rifle to his shoulder and stops. They are not cops. It goes against every bit of his training and life-experience to call out an awkward “Hey!”

The guy turns and jumps to his feet, eyes wide, and if he aimed the rifle Cougar’s way Cougar isn’t sure if he would have shot him down or not, but he doesn’t, turning the gun in his hand to swing like a club. 

Cougar’s never had an enemy crazy enough to charge down the barrel of his rifle before, and at the last minute he remembers to dodge, ducking out of the way and bringing the stock of his own guy up to smack the guy in the side of his head. The guy’s glasses go flying and he stumbles, one hand and one knee going down on the loose shale, but then he rushes up again, up under Cougar’s guard and slamming into his chest and they both go rolling back down the hill. 

Cougar loses the rifle in the crash, and the man gets a good punch in. He hits like a fucking mule and Cougar sees nothing but white for a second.

Roque is there then, barreling the guy to the ground with a roar and a “Don’t want to hurt you, you stupid motherfucker!” 

Pooch jumps in a beat later and Cougar piles back on, trying to get the guy pinned by their sheer weight if nothing else. He must be going on pure crazy, blood on his face, three men struggling against him and still fighting.

“God damn it!” Clay swears, “Stay down. Just stay down.”

Finally they get him pinned, chest-down on the ground, arms up behind him and Roque on his back. 

“Shit,” Clay mutters and Cougar wipes blood out from under his nose and silently agrees.

Then a ping-pong size rock smacks into the side of Roque’s head and a little voice demands “Stop it, you’re hurting him! Stop hurting him!” Three of the little troop have come back, rocks in their hands, scared but angry too. 

“You let him go, right now!” the smallest one says and throws another rock. Roque growls words that children shouldn’t be exposed to and tries to block the rock with his hand.

“God-damn it!” the guy on the ground swears. “I can’t believe you broke a pinky-swear!”

Clay jumps in then, stepping halfway between the rock-throwing brats and where the man is still struggling to throw Roque off of him.

“Hold it! Everybody just hold it!” he booms in that voice that has brought green cadets and combat veterans alike to a full stop. The girls gather up closer to each other but none of them throws. 

“Don’t,” the guy says and the fight goes out of him. “Don’t hurt them.”

Roque slowly lifts off of him and by then Cougar has his rifle back in his hand and he covers the guy. 

“Nobody wants to hurt anybody,” Clay reiterates. “Everybody just calm down and lets talk this out like civilized people.”

When nobody fights and nobody throws a rock, Roque steps back a little further. Cougar expects the girls to go running to the man then, but he gives them a glance and a “stay down” hand-gesture and they stay where they are. Two more creep out of the woods, joining the first three.

“You wanna talk, then talk,” the guy says and squints up at Clay. 

Shit, glasses, Cougar thinks, and he turns back to where the first blows were traded, looks around the gravel and rock until he sees the green-lenses. He looks through the glass and gives up a quick prayer of gratitude, that they aren’t broken or even badly scratched because the prescription’s strong enough that the man would be half-blind without them—too blind to survive for long and no reliable way to get replacements. 

He comes back to the discussion on the tail end of introductions, the guy (still sitting on his ass on the ground) saying “Corporal Jacob Jensen. I was on leave when all hell broke loose. Up here in the mountains with my sister and her kid, helping out with a hiking day-trip. No way to get back to base without abandoning the girls and fuck you very much if you think threat of a court martial would be incentive enough to make that an option.”

Roque looks around “Where’s your sister?” 

“Where the fuck is yours?” Jensen hisses back and Pooch puts a hand on his shoulder to warn him against going up after Roque. Roque isn’t a man made for apologies, but his jaw clenches and he looks away, looks down, and Cougar knows that’s as close as he gets.

“Those five all that made it?” Clay asks, gentler than Roque could have managed and Jensen nods, pain creasing his face at the thought. Nobody asks if his niece is one of the girls. None of them particularly look like him.

Cougar comes up from the side and nudges Jensen’s shoulder with his knee, offers him his glasses back. Jensen looks up at him, wary and uncertain, but he takes the glasses, adjusts the ear-piece a little and slides them on. Looks a little more certain now that he can see who he’s talking to. 

“Okay,” Clay says, making a decision, “We’re rolling you into our unit. We’re heading for Bragg, with orders to gather up any civilians we find on the way. If that means moving at their pace and providing for their needs, so be it.”

“Damn it,” Jensen grumbles, but Clay isn’t giving him much choice. “Let’s make one thing clear.” His voice drops low and dangerous, quiet so the kids can’t hear him. “Nobody touches those girls. Do you hear me?” 

He makes eye contact with each of them. “Anybody tries, and I’ll kill you. Swear to god, I’ll kill you.”

“Like you swore you’d shoot me in the face with an empty gun?” Clay asks, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Are we done here?” Jensen asks. “I’d like to let the girls know what’s going on, I need to get my pack and we have to start looking for a place for them to sleep tonight.”

“Sure,” Clay tells him and offers him a hand up. Jensen takes it and limps over to where the girls are standing. Cougar isn’t sure why but he follows along, stopping to shift his own pack enough to dig through it. He finds the small waxed-paper packet he’s looking for and crouches to one knee when he gets close enough.

Jensen makes the introductions, “This is Tia, Ashley, Ashleigh, Madison and Hailey.” He pauses. “Didn’t catch your name.”

“Alvarez,” he says, “Cougar to most.” 

Jensen points over. “The old guy is Clay. Him?”

“Roque,” Cougar supplies, “SiC. The other one’s Pooch. He can drive anything anywhere.”

He opens the precious package and pours a small handful of the bright candies into his palm. He’d been saving them in case he was ever bitten, one last treat before he ate a bullet. This seems a better use.

The girls hold back, wary and suspicious. He takes the moment to look them over, trying to gage their condition. He’s no pediatrician, but he thinks they look thin but healthy. Smudged but not filthy, hungry but not starving. 

“It’s okay,” Jensen tells them, and the first, the darker of the two Ashleys, with close-cropped black curls, steps forward and holds out her hand. Cougar gives her eight of the candies.

“What do we say?” Jensen asks in that prodding tone used by parents since time immemorial. 

“Thank you, Asshole,” Ashley sing-songs and Jensen chokes on a laugh.

“He _hit_ you with a _rifle_ ,” she insists and Cougar shrugs. 

“The lady has a point. Sorry about your face.”

“Yeah,” Jensen agrees, easier now. “I’m sorry about your face. _And_ for hitting you.”

A murmur of appreciation goes through the girls and one murmurs “Ooh, burn.” If all it takes to not be the enemy is taking a little ribbing with good humor, Cougar can deal with that.

One by one, the girls gather their courage and step closer to get their M&Ms, as Jensen explains to them. “These guys are coming with us to Fort Jackson, but nothing else is changing. What’s the first rule?”

“Stay in pairs,” they chant back at him.

“If you see anything wrong?” 

“Go back to you.”

“Unless?”

“Unless you’re blowing the whistle.”

Jensen grins. “That’s my girls.” He hesitates, and his next words are heavy, serious. “If you can’t get to me, get to these guys. Okay?”

Cougar bumps Jensen’s shoulder and he looks surprised to be given his ration of chocolate, his eyes blue and surprised behind the round rims of his glasses. And then he smiles, full and bright and even with blood tracking down the curve of his eyebrow and down around his eye socket, Cougar thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s seen in a long damn time.

============

Chocolate. Sun-warmed and soft inside the crunchy candy shell. The sugar coating melts on Jensen’s tongue and he’s having a taste-gasm right there in front of God and everybody. He takes his time, savoring the treats one at a time, trying not to show how fucking good it is to have something sweet after months of bugs and weeds and whatever game he and the girls can catch. 

“That’s…” he starts to say, but the CO yells over at he and Cougar at the same time.

“Cougar! Get his face cleaned up and check him over. Unless there’s a reason otherwise, we’re leaving in twenty minutes.”

"Girls,” Jensen calls, “Ten minutes. Madison, Ashley, Ashleigh, go get everyone’s packs. Tia, Hailey, mine’s up on that hill, the rifle too. Bring everything back here. Go.” They scatter to their tasks and Jensen feels a swell of pride at their swift efficiency. 

“Glasses off,” Cougar says and guides him to sit on the ground again. He pulls out a first-aid kit and draws disposable gloves on over his hands. 

“This’ll sting,” Cougar warns and wipes the cut over his eye with an alcohol pad. Jensen hisses and jerks his head and Cougar’s other hand squeezes his jaw to hold him still. 

“Fuck,” gripes Jensen, “Haven’t been manhandled this much in one day since that party at Ibiza.” His stomach swoops as he realizes what he’s said, what he’s given away, but Cougar just glances at him and finishes wiping the itchy line of drying blood off of his cheekbone. His hands are not exactly gentle, but he’s quick and efficient and doesn’t need to go back and do it twice. 

It stings like a son of a bitch, but it’s the first adult contact he’s had in months. Cougar’s close enough that Jensen can hear his breath, could count his eyelashes if he had time. He tries not to stare, not when the guy is so damn close. He doesn’t trust these guys, he tries to remind himself, for all the good it does. 

Cougar sticks some steri-strips on over the cut and Jensen knows he’s gonna lose some eyebrow hairs when those come off. “Done,” he calls to the Lt. Colonel. The girls are back with their gear by then, packs on and sticks in their hands. 

“Roque and I will walk point, the rest of you follow. We’ll try not to get too far ahead of you.”

“Ashleigh, you’re with me,” Jensen says, since Clay doesn’t look like he has any idea what orders a pack of ten-year-olds need. “Tia and Madison, Hailey and Ashley.” 

He gives the ‘spread out’ hand signal, followed by ‘move ahead’ and the little groups separate about twenty feet between them (and Jensen knows they’ll tighten up if the terrain tries to break their line of sight). 

“Holy shit,” Pooch says, catches himself “Shit, sorry. I mean shit.”

Roque smacks his head on the way to lead the way and Jensen doesn’t laugh even though he wants to. Tia looks back and gives Pooch a dark glare. He drifts back, apparently deciding that covering the rear is the safest place to be. Cougar steps in with Jensen and Ashleigh and he figures, if something does happen to him that the girls will be safer with these four than the would be alone at least, and better to share what he’s trained them on to increase their chances even further.

“They know standard Close Range Engagement hand signals. Stop, down, move up, column or spread formation. We use hostage,” he puts his hand to his throat, “For zombies. Zs I guess you guys call them. A couple others we made up for hunting.” 

Cougar’s eyebrow raises and Jensen shrugs. “You think I could keep all these kids fed by myself? You think you could? We had a week’s worth of trail-mix and the rest they’ve learned what to eat and how to get it and we’ve been mostly living off what we find.”

He glances over at his girls, each team working with a spotter and a gatherer. One watches for the living dead while the other looks down, searching for edible greens or game-trails, gathering grasshoppers if they find them. 

A flock of quail trill out ahead of them and Tia pauses and frowns. Jensen shakes his head as she looks to him for guidance. They’re already scattered, too much chase to get just one or two. At this pace, he thinks they’ll _have_ to hit some towns, trading speed for hunting time. 

When it was just him, the risk was too high. To bring them into what was once a populated area, or leave them behind and risk them being taken or killed. With even a small unit of soldiers though, the risk drops. The girls can stay hidden and guarded while supplies are gathered. 

It’s so tempting. To hand this burden off. He just has to know if he can trust them, and more than that, trust their superiors.

============

The light hasn’t yet started to fade when Clay and Roque come to a large stream with a cleared bank, fire-pit already dug out and lined with rocks like it’s just waiting for the summer tourists to arrive. 

“Best we can hope for tonight,” Roque says and Clay nods.

“Let’s make sure it’s secure while we wait for them to catch up.” Slowing himself to the girls’ pace has been difficult. Even with a likely compromised destination, his instincts say _get there faster._ He runs inventory in his head to occupy his mind and keep himself from going crazy at the crippled speed they’re making. He’s not sure how much supplies the girls will need, but even estimating them at half a man’s calories each, the food The Losers had before, plus the food they got at the last town can’t keep them for more than a few more days. He’s going to have to alter his plans. More excursions into once-inhabited areas. More risk, even though it’s been a few weeks since they’ve seen a Z fresh enough to be truly dangerous. 

Jensen and Cougar come down the hiking trail, the girls clustered around them. Two of them are carrying dead rabbits and Jensen has a spiky dead porcupine hanging from a stick over his shoulder. The corporal looks to Clay for a second, expecting—something. 

“Okay,” he says when he doesn’t get it, “We’re setting up camp late,” he tells the girls and by Clay’s estimation they’ve got an hour of good daylight left and another of twilight, doesn’t seem late to him.

“Tia, Ashley, set up the sleeping. Hailey, Ashleigh, we need every hook baited for night-fishing. Madison, you’re with me on cooking detail; go ahead and start gathering some kindling.” 

Pooch comes down the trail then, having made sure they hadn’t drawn any Zs after them. His eye are wide as he watches the quick precision of the nightly preparations. “Scary as shit,” he whispers to Clay, “This is not natural. They ran down the rabbits like a pack of little wolves, Clay. This is not right.”

“Ready, Jake,” one of the girls who’d been on bedroll duty calls, and he goes over to the tree they’re clustered around. He cups his hands and boosts one and then the other up into the branches, then hands up the bedrolls. 

“Zombies don’t climb,” Jensen says when he catches Clay watching. The girls scurry like squirrels into the branches, hanging blankets like three-point hammocks far off of the ground.

Pooch and Cougar volunteer to gather wood for a fire. Roque stands watch. 

“So what’s with the wilderness survival?” Clay asks as Jensen pulls a frying pan from his pack and proceeds to bleed the rabbits and porcupine into it. “Seems a little above and beyond even for the Rangers.”

Jensen laughs, a quick bark of something less then mirth. “Hey, I’m just the tech guy. Communications? A little hacking? I can manage that. This Lord of the Flies bullshit was not on my resume, I can assure you. But we had the basics to get us started. A book on wilderness survival and eleven mouths to feed.” His mirth fades. “Going into a town lost us the other two adults and one of the kids, so we couldn’t do that again without a good reason. If I’d flinched at eating bugs or butchering rabbits then they would have too, and we’d all have starved.”

One of the girls on hook-baiting duty comes over and Jensen cuts up the fluffy rabbits’ tails into little tufts. Clay sees them attaching grasshoppers to the hooks and a shiny piece of gum-wrapper foil. Anything to look edible.

Cougar comes back with the first armload of dead-fall and piles it up. The girl, Madison, brings him a little pile of fine-cut kindling, and he gives her his most charming smile. Cougar gets the fire crackling and Jensen builds a little altar of rocks to hold the pan up against it. He butchers out the rabbits, some of the guts going into the pan, then spreads them out on Y-shaped sticks over the flames. The porcupine he gingerly skins and adds to the pan, along with a couple handfulls of greens that Madison brings him. 

When dinner’s cooking, he wraps all the scraps up in one of the rabbit skins and carries it a dozen yards or so downstream and tosses it to the far side of the stream. “Woke up with a bear in our camp one morning,” he says with a crooked grin. “That was a fun party. Shooting it called down half a dozen zombies and then I had to take care of them too. Lost the whole day up in a tree, but at least the bear was good eating.” 

============

“Cougar, you’ve got first watch,” Clay tells him. “Roque next, then me and Pooch gets the dawn shift.”

“And him?” Cougar asks, pointing up where their newest conscript has disappeared up the tree with the kids. Not worried that the man isn’t pulling his weight, just curious to know what Clay’s feelings on Jensen are.

Clay looks up and snorts. “Unless one of us is willing to be the inter-operational liaison, I say let him rest when he can.”

Cougar nods and leans his rifle against the camp-tree, checks his pistol and settles in on to watch as the rest of the team roll their bedding out by the fire and camp down. 

He can hear voices from above, one of the girls saying “The giant was at the top of the cliff and the man in black was coming up,” and then Jensen picking up, “Right, right. So the giant gets to the top, and he and the Sicilian make off with the princess, leaving Inigo to stop the man in black.” 

Cougar leans against the tree and listens, a smile playing at his lips as the Spaniard reveals “You see, I am not left-handed,” to which the hero (for surely the man in black must be) replies, “Ah, but I also am not left-handed.”


End file.
